Dr. Dionisios Vourloumis was born in 1966 in Athens, Greece. He graduated from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, obtaining the Degree of Chemistry in 1990.The work of D. Vourloumis has focused in the past on the total synthesis of natural products and analogs thereof for the establishment of structure-activity relationships toward the optimization of their pharmacological profile, along with organic chemistry methodology development in solution and solid phase. For his Ph.D. thesis at the West Virginia University (WVU) in Morgantown, WV, from January 1991 to December 1994, he investigated the stereocontrolled synthesis of enediyne-carbocycles and enediyne-lactones, analogs of the known family of enediyne antibiotics, for their controlled activation under physiological conditions and consequent reduction of the toxic effects associated with their action as anticancer agents.

Working with Professor Nicolaou at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in San Diego, California from June 1996 to April 1999, he was involved in the total synthesis and biological evaluation of various different anticancer agents, namely several members of the epothilone family, the marine agents eleutherobin, sarcodictyins A and B and eleuthosides A and B, and apoptolidine and analogs thereof. During that time he was also trained in several aspects of combinatorial chemistry, including the parallel design and the use of specific instrumentation for the desired solid phase transformations.

His work at the Combinatorial Technology Team (CTT) of the pharmaceutical industry GlaxoWellcome (currently GlaxoSmithKline), North Carolina, from May 1999 to July 2000, perfected his high-throughput combinatorial chemistry experience, which he applied for the construction of chemical libraries, and educated him on the biological involvement of orphan nuclear receptors in the areas of obesity and diabetes.

From July 2000 to June 2005, at Anadys Pharmaceuticals, Inc., San Diego, California, D. Vourloumis has been involved in the rational design and synthesis of small molecule therapeutics in the areas of Hepatitis C, in collaboration with EMBL Heidelberg (European Molecular Biology Laboratory), antibacterials, and metabolic diseases.

In June 2005 he moved back to Athens, to work as a Research Director at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, NCSR "Demokritos", in the field of Chemical Biology. His research focuses on the total synthesis of natural products and designed analogs with improved potencies and pharmacological profiles, the development of new synthetic methodologies in solution and solid phase and the development of new in vitro biological assays for the evaluation of the new synthetic entities.

A complete CV in pdf is here

The Group Members

A list of Publications